In South Africa, injury remains one of the major causes of death. International data also
suggests that intentional and unintentional deaths are on the increase globally with
highest increases noted in the middle and low income economies. The National Injury
Mortality Surveillance System (NIMSS) which captures only 40% of all annual nonnatural
deaths revealed that 27% of these deaths occurring mainly in adults and children
are motor vehicle related. 58% of these are pedestrians. The rationale of this study
stems from the findings for the National Injury Mortality Surveillance System (NIMSS)
of 2002, which indicated a high pedestrian mortality. This study is a descriptive cross
sectional analysis of pedestrian related mortality data from an existing NIMSS database.
Continuous variables were summarised using means and standard deviation while
categorical variable were summarised using proportions. Summary data were presented
in graphs and tables. This was conducted using a statistical programme STATA10.
Between 2001 and 2005, motor vehicle transport related deaths comprised 11.32% of all
recorded un-natural deaths in Soweto with pedestrians accounting for 50% of deaths.
The Pedestrian mortality comprised the dominant proportion of all motor vehicle related
mortality from 2001to2005 (compared to drivers, passengers and unspecified road user
categories). From the results of the study, it was shown that most pedestrian deaths
occurred in the black population group, followed by coloureds. It also confirmed that the
majority of pedestrian deaths were of the male gender group. With regards to time and
day of death, it concluded that pedestrian deaths occurred in between 1800h and 2400h,
mainly over weekends, whereas by age group, age group, most pedestrian fatalities were
adolescents and young adults followed by children. When it came to access to
emergency medical care, the study showed that the majority of dead pedestrians were
never attended to by Emergency Medical personnel. Blood alcohol concentrations were
raised in a high percentage of those fatalities in whom it was possible to measure such
concentrations, suggesting that alcohol played a significant role in pedestrian deaths. A
number of preventative and advocacy initiatives are recommended, with emphasis on
broad based stake holder participation, education, engineering, as well as targeted
interventions that address specific issues that were identified as major contributing
factors to the observed increased vulnerability in those specific categories of pedestrians.